A tubby suburban dad watching hunting and adventure shows
on TV and wondering could I do that?
This is the chronicle of my adventures as I learn to learn to Forage,
Hunt and Fish for food that has lived as I would wish to myself -
Wild and Free.

I saw the brand and calibre I wanted, at about the right money, on British Blades

PCP – Pre-Charged Pneumatic

I know they have their fans but to me springers (AKA break-action air rifles) are yesterday’s technology. As soon as I understood that, unlike a powder burning rifle or PCP, with a springer the recoil is happening BEFORE the pellet leaves the barrel, I knew I wanted a PCP. I’m told my rifle holds enough air for eighty shots between refills and either needs to be filled at the diving shop or pumped with a special ‘dry air’ pump.

There are nicer looking rifles (to my eye), there are marginally more accurate rifles (supposedly) and there are defiantly more expensive rifles. But all-in-all Air Arms offerings look unbeatable for value, and I read a few forum posts where people who now own more expensive rifles said they’d still recommend Air Arms for the money.

S400 Carbine.

My Rabbit hunting guru James Marchington uses an Air Arms S400 in his excellent DVD ‘Rabbits’I was planning to buy the bottom of the range S200 but when the S400 Carbine came up I went for it.I like idea of the carbine (short barrel) model, as anything to make sneaking up on the wabbits easier has got to be a good thing.

.177

I wanted a rifle with as flatter trajectory as possible so I could have the best possible chance of putting the pellet where I aim it every time. The fabled extra oomph of the .22 sounds sweet, but where the pellet hits and what it does on arrival has to be more important than how much of it arrives there.

The three P’s of a clean kill - Placement, Placement, and Projectile.

Magazine [edited]

The rifles are shipped as single shot, a company called Rowan Engineering do an 8 shot conversion for which mine has.

Scope

With a huntable range of 35 yards, I didn’t need to sell a kidney for a Schmidt & Bender, and the rifle came with an AGS scope in 4-9X40 magnification.

Moderation

Not usually a word that’s synonymous with your pal the Bushwacker. On TV they’re called silencers, under UK law they’re called moderators, either way they turn PHHSSST! Into phhssst, and my rifle came with one.

The other bit of good news is that I ran into R&E and E very generously put her vegetarianism to one side and gave me permission to hunt her land!

Yes! What amounts to my own private hunting preserve in the New Forest.

Pigeon, Squirrel and those pesky Wabbits!

Your Pal

SBW

PS: I’ll not be going shooting for a couple of weeks so there’s bound to be time for more of the hot air regular readers have come to expect. Phew!

Size of projectile is very important. Simply, a small projectile does less damage than a large projectile. Always go for the .22 over the 177 for hunting.I have a BSA .22 air rifle. But I hunt bigger game these days and use a .62 cal flintlock fusil. It does not have the accuracy or penetrating abilities of say a .50 cal using 90 grains of black powder against my use of 60 grains of black powder but the game I hit does not get away! It stps it right there. Size does count!Le Loup.

Oooooohh yes! Heavens to Betsy, I'm pleased to see this development! I do like the idea of windfalls that sprout AA PCP's. Much of my life is, in fact, spent fantasising about just such an occurrence. And a new permission to use it on! Crikey! Have you been doing any of that Noel Edmonds Cosmic Ordering stuff, by any chance? I'd buy a lottery ticket if I was you. I'm very much looking forward to reading about your first hunting trip with this!

ChasI’m always intrigued by the US air rifle fraternity, in a land where a .22 is an over the counter purchase, an air rifle looks a VERY expensive choice. But air rifles clearly have their fans over there and people are buying the high end English ones – which are an arm and a leg here – so they must seem massively expensive there

Trend wise I don’t know whether my mainland European neighbours have silencer/moderator/suppressors for their air rifles from what I’ve seen they don’t have them on their centre fires, where as in the UK lots of people have them as an adjunct to their ticket. They are a health and safety consideration.

I wonder if your Eurasian collared doves are like our wood pigeons (AKA collared doves) if so a total result for you. YummySBW

That's awesome, SBW! Nice rifle, and I expect you're gonna have some great times with it! I can only imagine what it's like securing a place to hunt over there...

I've been looking closely at the big bore air rifles, but as of now there are very few places to hunt with them in the U.S. Somehow, though, the idea of taking a 300lb boar with an air rifle really gets the blood flowing.

Ah Big Bore Air Rifles - Quackerz and the like.I want one too, I heard a rumor that there was at least one person who had persuaded the cops he should have a ticket for one in the UK but I've never seen one in the metal.SBW

I recently bought a Crosman Marauder in .177 (a nice PCP despite the overreach on the name), and the shrouded barrel makes the thing largely silent - the loudest noise is the ping of the hammer.

PCP airguns are a little louder than most think (they're definitely louder than springers), and I love the quiet factor.

We live on three wooded acres in the mountains, and I still prefer the quiet gun - for both aesthetic and happier neighbor relations.

That said, if I was hunting, I might opt for a .22 Marauder; muzzle velocities of the more powerful airguns don't fall that much, and airguns seem to be most accurate at velocities under 1000 fps anyway.

I was very keen on the idea of one of the more powerful air guns but i've read a couple of pieces recently that have left me thinking that the characteristic that I'll be looking for next is point-ability rather than power as there are question marks over the consistency of the punchier guns. Also anything that promotes field craft has to be a better use of my time.

I'm a big fan of your blog, thanks for taking the time to comment. SBW